


Teenage Suicide: Not the Worst Idea Ever

by ijemanja



Category: Heathers (1988)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-05
Updated: 2008-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/pseuds/ijemanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After unsuccessfully committing gay naked double suicide with Ram out in the woods, Kurt shows up at school Monday morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teenage Suicide: Not the Worst Idea Ever

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: this fic is just as full of suicide references, homophobia and homophobic slurs as the movie.
> 
> Written for Lenore. Thank you to Moontyger for the beta!

 

 

Kurt's arm is in a sling. 

There was some stuff the doctors said about tendons and extensive damage and how getting shot in the shoulder can really screw up your future college football career.

Whatever. 

After the meeting first thing Monday morning with Coach and the principal and his parents where they all agree transferring isn't going to happen this late in the school year, while Kurt sits there and thinks they're all retarded, Kurt goes to class.

Even his English teacher stares at him like he's from Mars, like he gives a shit. Let them stare. Kurt is a senior. This is his _year_. And his shoulder is going to be fine and no one is going to believe this fag bullshit anyway.

*

Kurt ends up back at the hospital after approximately four hours of school. 

Coincidentally, this is the same amount of time before his lunch period in the cafeteria.

The guys were giving him shit; what was he supposed to do? And who cares if he ripped out all his stitches and now the doctors are saying he messed up his shoulder even worse than before? He got in a few good punches before he fell to the ground, clutching his shoulder and screaming. 

Totally worth it.

Anyway, they re-admit him for the night. He doesn't sleep much. He figures they didn't give him the good drugs like they did before because everything still hurts this time. There's none of that soft fuzziness pulling him into unconsciousness. 

Plus it's fucking impossible to get comfortable with your arm in a full plaster cast stuck out at ninety-degrees from your body.

In the morning, before his mom comes to pick him up, he goes to see Ram.

"Dude," Ram says. It comes out sort of muffled, because his neck and half his face are packed with thick white bandages. But, "Dude," he says. "Everyone thinks we're homos."

He looks kind of weak, lying there, pale and still hooked up to tubes and things. But for the first time since all this shit started, everything is back to normal.

*

Kurt figured he was dead when he first woke up.

Everything was bright and fuzzy at the same time, and the first thing he saw was his little sister standing at the foot of his bed, staring and staring at him with wide eyes. His mom was there, she was standing over him holding his hand. And his dad was over in the corner, crying.

Yeah, he thought he was dead, and that he was looking up out of his dead body while his family got all grief-stricken over his corpse.

Then his god damn bullet wound started to really fucking hurt. 

He must have groaned, and his sister yelled, "He's awake!"

And then he remembered: Veronica Sawyer and that psycho dick-muncher JD had shot him and Ram out in the woods behind the school.

Not awesome.

*

When Kurt arrives at school on Wednesday there is a bottle of mineral water in his locker.

It isn't the worst thing that could happen. He knows, because that already happened last night, over dinner, when his dad broke down sobbing and begging to know what he did to turn his son into a pansy-ass fairy.

On his way to class, Kurt grabs a random dweeb and stuffs him into his own locker.

It's lame, and he's a senior and he should totally be over that kind of thing, but it makes him feel a little better, all the same.

He does it one-handed, too. Ram, he thinks, would have been impressed if he were there.

*

Kurt, senior and Westerburg High quarterback, comes to the conclusion that his life _sucks_ and that the world is a completely messed up place if things can get so bad so fast for a guy like him.

He comes to this conclusion on Thursday when none of the girls at school will let him hit on them. None. Not even the ugly ones, and he tries a couple.

"I'M THE GOD DAMN QUARTERBACK," he yells after two chunky sophomores as they run off down the hall away from him, giggling.

Quarterback. That used to _mean_ something.

*

No one believes them about what happened. 

It doesn't help that JD has disappeared from school, and no one would ever believe popular girl Veronica Sawyer could have anything to do with it.

He had _tried_ to explain: He and Ram went to the woods behind the school to gang bang Veronica, and instead she and her mental patient boyfriend tried to kill them and set it all up to look like a gay suicide pact.

"What's more likely?" he demanded, looking up desperately at his parents from his hospital bed. "That, or me and Ram being secret cock-sucking homos?" 

"What's a gang bang?" his sister asked.

*

By Friday, Kurt has made a list.

Things in the life of Kurt Kelly that are righteously fucked up:

1\. The noticeable drop in the general level of respect from the nerd quarter. No matter how many of them he stuffs in lockers or body-checks into walls.

2\. The guys making it clear they don't want him in their locker room. He can't do gym anyway, so he doesn't even have to change clothes, but they make it clear all the same.

3\. None of the girls letting him hit on them. _Still._

4\. Seeing Veronica Sawyer fucking _everywhere_. And not being able to kick her ass and _make_ her tell the truth because you can't hit girls, even if they shoot you. 

5\. When that douchebag hippie stoner kid who always parks his van next to Kurt's jeep starts telling him about his aunt who's gay, and then offers to share a joint.

6\. That his whole arm and chest hurt so much and he is just so fucking over _everything_ that he can't even be bothered beating the shit out of the hippie. He just swipes the joint and walks away.

*

He didn't see Ram the first time he was in the hospital, right after getting shot.

He asked about him, though, first thing after waking up and remembering what had happened, because Ram got shot too and Ram was his best friend and if Ram was dead then there was going to be a god damn reckoning, that's what.

His mom and dad had looked at each other for a long time, until Kurt thought _oh fuck he's dead oh fuck oh fuck._ But then his mom, all tight-lipped, said, "He's here in the hospital. They think he'll be okay."

And he realised that wasn't what the look had been about.

He didn't ask again.

*

"The thing is, Kurt, you're going around looking like someone drowned your puppy, and no one gives a shit. Doesn't that tell you something?"

And how pathetic is it, Kurt wonders, that Veronica Sawyer is kind of like the closest thing he has to a friend now? "You shot me," he says.

"Yes. Yes I did."

"Jesus, it's not like I stuck it to your grandma, Veronica."

"Hey, you were fine with everyone talking bullshit about _my_ perverted sexual habits, Kurt. Not so funny when it goes the other way, is it?"

Kurt punches a locker, because it's still not okay to kick her ass.

Then he clutches at his shoulder for a while.

"Does it hurt?" Veronica asks.

"Well the pills they gave me don't do shit, so yeah."

"Well, I'm sorry," she says. "For what it's worth, I didn't know they were real bullets. I thought it'd be like shooting someone with a BB gun." She shrugs. "I keep thinking - what would have happened if you guys had died? Things'd probably be a little different."

He tries to picture it, his funeral, and everyone kneeling over his open casket like they did when Heather died.

He thinks about waking up in the hospital, and asking about Ram.

He shrugs with his one good shoulder. "Not for me. I'd be dead, Ram too."

"Sure," Veronica shrugs back. "Can't be a social outcast if you're dead."

*

Kurt goes back to see Ram. It's been a whole week since they got shot.

Ram's sitting up and looking a little better, and around him on the bed are a couple of books and a bunch of pamphlets kind of like the one his doctor gave him that time Kurt went to get that rash looked at.

"My parents are making me talk to this counselor," Ram says.

"Figures. My dad keeps making me watch porn with him."

"Whoa. Not bad."

"I guess." He shrugs and picks up one of the pamphlets lying by Ram's knee. _So You Think You're Into Dudes_ , he reads. He drops it back onto the bed, and picks up another. _Coming to Terms With Your Sexuality._

He grabs a book and reads the title aloud: " _Alternative Lifestyles and YOU?_ You're _reading_ this shit?" He pauses. This is Ram he's talking to. "You're _reading_?"

"There's no TV in here."

"Who the hell is this counselor?"

"I dunno, she's helping me realise it's okay to be me."

"Shit, man, what are you on?"

"I don't know. They say they have to keep me kinda sedated 'cause if I move too much my jugular vein could explode right out the side of my neck."

"Cool."

Ram grins and lets out a laugh. That stupid, goofy laugh of his. "Shyeah, I know."

Kurt doesn't really say anything for a while. 

Because the thing is, Kurt is kind of pissed off right now. With Ram. But he doesn't do anything and he doesn't say anything because he's a major social reject but he's still a senior and he's too old to be whaling on his best friend when he's in worse shape than Kurt is and it could make his neck explode.

Even if Ram is just lying there surrounded by homo-loving reading material and not at school looking like a total dipshit with his arm in a cast stuck out permanently to the side, and not getting socially rejected every day for being a fag _which he's not anyway_.

He's totally thinking about ripping that IV tube out of Ram's arm and sticking it into his own, though. It must be the good stuff, because Ram is looking happy, in spite of everything. Kurt could really use some of that.

"How's school?" Ram asks.

"Shit," Kurt replies. "Total shit."

"Oh," Ram says. "That sucks."

Kurt goes home after that. 

*

Kurt's complete and utter willingness to throw down with total disregard for his own physical well-being has worked out okay in the long run. After that first day back at school when he ended up right back in hospital, no one has really tried to kick his ass too badly. 

But it's not enough.

Another week goes by, and Ram gets out of hospital to finish getting better at home, and that psycho JD shows up again and tries to blow up the school, but nothing changes much for Kurt.

His shoulder hurts a little less, but he still can't sleep.

No one tries to jump him in the locker room, but no one talks to him, either - not anyone he wants to talk to, anyway. 

After school, he hangs out in his room and tries to do some homework and when that stupid song comes on the radio he switches it off. Then he unplugs the radio and goes to give it to his little sister.

It makes her happy, and that's good. Someone should be happy.

He goes back to his room, and he thinks about doing it.

What does that song know, anyway? Not committing suicide, on the whole, has not worked out so great for Kurt Keller.

Five minutes later, his little sister sticks her head in his room. "Kurt, Ram is at the door."

*

"Hey."

"Hey."

They hang there on the doorstep. His mom is banging things around in the kitchen because she knows Ram is there.

"I thought you had to stay still," Kurt says.

"Yeah, but not so much, and dude, it is so _boring_ at home. So I took my dad's car. It's okay driving just so long as I don't try to look in any of the mirrors."

"I can't drive at all," Kurt admits. "Can't change gears and steer with one hand."

"Well, come on then," Ram says.

Kurt doesn't think, he just grabs his jacket.

*

It's later that night and Kurt and Ram are in a cow pasture. The same cow pasture where Kurt and Ram took Heather McNamara and Veronica Sawyer on their double date the night after Heather Chandler's funeral.

The next day at school, he and Ram had made sure everyone knew how Veronica had totally put out, for both of them at once. It had seemed funny at the time. But Kurt doesn't want to think about that. He doesn't want to think about how maybe they sort of brought this on themselves because who goes and shoots someone for spreading a few rumours, _fuck._

No girls are here to watch them tonight. 

The two of them just stand there, kind of winded after climbing down through the woods from the car, and then getting themselves over the fence.

The cows just stand around, too, in that weird way cows have of sleeping, and Kurt and Ram stand there with their bandages and their plaster casts and think logistics.

"I don't think I can tip any cows tonight, Kurt," Ram says, turning his head gingerly to the side to look at him.

"We could give it a try. No pain, no gain, right?"

"I dunno. Maybe it wouldn't be as fun as we think. Maybe we should just leave them alone."

WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? Is what Kurt wants to yell. But he doesn't, because this is Ram. He knows it is, so he just asks, "What the hell happened to you, man?"

Ram screws up his face in thought. "I think I almost died, Kurt."

"No shit." 

"Huh," Ram adds after a moment, like he isn't really listening. "I haven't been thinking about it much? But I guess I must have been thinking about it. Because I have all these thoughts and it's like _us_ , Kurt. Like you know how we're seniors, and we're too old to still be giving nerds swirlies and shit? Yeah, it's like, we should be above all of that."

"Dude," Kurt says. "Dude, that is so gay."

"Shyeah, I know. It's just like, I don't know anymore if that's such a bad thing."

If it was anyone but Ram saying things like that to him, Kurt would have just punched them. Or at least have given them a major wedgie.

It's just, it's _Ram._

"I don't know," Kurt says. "I don't know shit anymore. So maybe you're right." He kicks his foot in the dirt and turns away from the cows, looking up at the hill and the woods, at the night sky above it. He takes a breath and lets it out. It's almost summer. "What the hell, we're graduating soon anyway. We never have to see any of those turd-buckets again."

After a moment he feels Ram coming to stand beside him. "Hey Kurt," Ram says. "How are we going to get back up to the car?"

"Fuck. We'll make it somehow."

"Yeah. Hey, I love you, man."

"Fag."

Ram laughs. "Homo."

"Yeah, man," Kurt says, and hesitates, and swallows hard, and thinks about saying it back. 

He's _not_ going to say it. But the possibility is there, and it's weird how that feels kind of okay. 

"Now," Kurt continues, "give me some of whatever you're on. Seriously, dude, right now or I will take your ass down."

And Ram laughs again.

 


End file.
